University of Venda

General Information

Data Carpentry develops and teaches workshops on the fundamental data skills needed to conduct
research. Its target audience is researchers who have little to no prior computational experience,
and its lessons are domain specific, building on learners' existing knowledge to enable them to quickly
apply skills learned to their own research.
Participants will be encouraged to help one another
and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.

Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a
Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges
on. They should have a few specific software packages installed (listed
below). They are also required to abide by
Data Carpentry's
Code of Conduct.

Accessibility: We are committed to making this workshop
accessible to everybody.
The workshop organizers have checked that:

The room is wheelchair / scooter accessible.

Accessible restrooms are available.

Materials will be provided in advance of the workshop and
large-print handouts are available if needed by notifying the
organizers in advance. If we can help making learning easier for
you (e.g. sign-language interpreters, lactation facilities) please
get in touch (using contact details below) and we will
attempt to provide them.

Registration: Please complete the online registration form at https://goo.gl/forms/PLQUNAUBvX72htt92. Limited space is available. The workshop is free to attend but a R500 no-show fee will be payable by registered participants who does not show up to the workshop without giving the workshop organisers at least 1 week notice.

Surveys

Please be sure to complete these surveys before and after the workshop.

R

Windows

Install R by downloading and running
this .exe file
from CRAN.
Also, please install the
RStudio IDE.
Note that if you have separate user and admin accounts, you should run the
installers as administrator (right-click on .exe file and select "Run as
administrator" instead of double-clicking). Otherwise problems may occur later,
for example when installing R packages.

macOS

Linux

You can download the binary files for your distribution
from CRAN. Or
you can use your package manager (e.g. for Debian/Ubuntu
run sudo apt-get install r-base and for Fedora run
sudo dnf install R). Also, please install the
RStudio IDE.

OpenRefine

For this lesson you will need OpenRefine and a
web browser. Note: this is a Java program that runs on your machine (not in the cloud).
It runs inside a web browser, but no web connection is needed.

Windows

Check that you have either the Firefox or the Chrome browser installed and set as your default browser.
OpenRefine runs in your default browser.
It will not run correctly in Internet Explorer.